by J. R. Rain
“Just a bayonet wound.” He fidgets at the crude bandage. “I wasn’t even fighting, missus. Jus’ a letter carrier. But I have a message for General Jackson.”
I help him up. “They tried to kill the messenger.”
He peers at me quizzically for a moment, then nods. “Yeah, I guess. Alvie Thorngate, missus.”
“Sam.”
“That’s a boy’s name,” says Alvie.
I laugh. “Samantha.”
“Oh.” He grins. “Sorry.”
“Come on.”
After helping him back to the surgery barn, I resume hunting around for Delacroix. Alas, my search comes up with nothing but more frustration and worry. The thought of being trapped back in time for the next century and change gets me so worked up I come damn close to considering expediting the whole Civil War by killing Jackson and President Davis right here.
Instead, I run around checking with any Confederate soldier who appears to be on guard duty, hoping one of them might’ve seen Delacroix. An older (and by that I mean past thirty) sergeant by the name of Jeremiah Dolan mentions he’d seen ‘some fancy French guy’ going with a few other people being transported by horse and cart back to Richmond since the train is indefinitely delayed here.
Great.
Right back to freakin’ Richmond, which is like fifty or sixty miles south.
Okay, well, easy fix for that.
At least it’s already dark. I head off into the woods until I’m certain there’s no possible chance of being spotted. Eyes closed, I picture that secluded alley in Richmond where I landed before, and call to the flame in my mind. A sudden shift in acoustics outside accompanies a change in scenery from trees to buildings.
If not for being stuck housing an ultimate evil, vampire-ness would be pretty cool. This teleportation thing would save tons of money commuting. Since Sergeant Dolan didn’t exactly know when the wagon left—he vaguely recalled it heading out early in the afternoon—it’s possible they’ve already reached the city. Then again, I’m not entirely sure how fast a horse-drawn wagon can go, so perhaps they’re still on the way.
I head straight back to the Spotswood Hotel. Even at the late hour, the streets are packed with an array of people from children to soldiers to women and even elders. Soldiers and displaced citizens mill about, many desperate faces gazing at me as I go by. All around, voices complain about the influx of soldiers as well as people from the countryside fleeing battle. From the sounds of it, all the hotels are overfull and they’ve even started invading private homes. The Confederate Army has appropriated many of the actual hotels and turned them into makeshift hospitals. The original hospital is an utter madhouse.
Once I reach the Spotswood, I muscle my way through the crowd and approach the desk clerk.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. We’re full up,” says the man.
“Not looking for a room. I’m trying to find a guest who’s staying here, a Mr. Delacroix?”
He shakes his head. “Not so many guests at the moment, ma’am. Mostly injured soldiers. Is this Mr. Delacroix on the list?” He points at a wall, where someone has tacked up two rosters of soldiers’ names, one for wounded, one for dead. A group of women gathered nearby occasionally burst into tears and hysterics when they spot a loved one’s name on the deceased list.
“No, he was a guest the other day. Has he returned?” I ask.
The clerk examines some papers on the counter, finds nothing, and shrugs at me. “If he has come back here, he would’ve been turned away as we have no rooms.”
Damn! I yell in my head, though manage to keep a calm exterior. “Well, if you see him, please let him know I need to speak with him. It is a matter of utmost importance.” While saying that, I implant a compulsion to send word to me discreetly without letting Delacroix know.
“Of course, Miss.” The clerk bows.
Grumbling, I start toward the exit, intending to find a place where I can disrobe and take to the skies, but stop short when a young woman rushes up to me.
“Miss Moon?”
“Yes,” I say, looking her up and down. She’s twenty give or take a year, with straw-blonde hair and hazel eyes. Her face is young, though, and in a portrait without the rest of her body visible, she’d pass for thirteen. By her dress, I assume she works here at the hotel. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“Elisa Collier, Miss Moon.” She curtseys and hands me a small wax-sealed envelope along with a small wooden box. “I heard you asking after Mr. Delacroix. He requested that I wait here and give these to you.”
I almost scream ‘dammit’ in her face, but it’s not this poor girl’s fault that I missed him. My smile is forced enough that she leans back, worried. I try to relax. “Mr. Delacroix had some rather important matters to assist me with and I am quite keen on finding him. Do you know where he went?”
Elisa shakes her head. “No, miss. He neglected to say. Only asked me to make sure you got these.”
I turn the small envelope over in my fingers. The brownish-yellow paper is unmarked, sealed with a glob of wax that looks hastily pressed. The Aztec pattern reminds me of Delacroix’s ring.
“Thank you,” I say, nodding at Elisa.
She smiles and scurries off, deeper into the hotel.
What are you playing at, Delacroix? I tap the letter at the box a few times before deciding to find some privacy to read.
Chapter Eight
Minutes later, I locate a quiet alley and disappear into the shadows as deep as I can go. Despite the darkness, my vampiric eyes are quite capable of reading, so I pick the wax away and unfurl what turns out to be a folded bit of paper, not an envelope.
Dear Samantha Moon,
Please accept my deepest sympathies regarding your situation. However, it has been my experience that dealing with vampires seldom ends well for mortals, and those of my particular talents even less so. I prefer to distance myself as much as possible from them regardless of how noble your intentions might be. There is, however, a favor you can do for me. Wait for nightfall one day hence, and deliver the contents of this box to a man named Cumberland. I had intended to deliver the box myself, though the recent commencement of hostilities necessitates my return to the North post-haste. Don’t bother to follow, and I mean that in every sense of the word.
Regards,
Jean Delacroix.
I smirk. Not only is he abandoning me (okay, so I was trying to force him to help, but still), he expects me to play messenger girl? Hah!
The second that thought forms in my mind, the ink shifts from black to glowing golden light. Like a string unwinding, the writing spools up from the letter into a thread that floats toward my face. My head fogs for a second and I find myself staring at blank paper.
“What on Earth?” I frown. “Oh. Probably one of those spy-type things… disappearing ink.”
I start to toss the box aside, but a pain shoots through my bicep like a bullet.
“Gah!” I grab my arm, shaking from how much that hurt. “Shit!”
The pain fades in a few seconds. Again, I try to discard the box, and the pain hits me again, strong enough to bring tears to my eyes.
Ooh! I scowl. The bastard ensorcelled me.
One last attempt to get rid of the box makes me cry out at a feeling like I’d stuck my whole right arm into a meat grinder. The instant I abandon the urge to drop it, the pain stops. Oh, Delacroix… I’m going to do something unpleasant when I catch up to you. He didn’t even tell me where to find this Cumberland person.
Might as well get this over with. Cumberland’s not a common name, at least I don’t think so. Maybe it is back in the 1800s, though I suspect it might be a slave name since it lacked a “Mr.” or a first name. I manage one step with the intent to find him before a wave of agony hits me like I’d body surfed a giant cheese grater naked.
I can’t help but shriek and freeze in place.
Oh, you bastard…
I suspect Delacroix thinks he’s buying himself enough of a head
start to elude me for good, but he doesn’t know how fast Talos can move.
My cry attracts two men from the nearby street who come running over.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” asks the taller one.
The other steps past me to look around at the alley.
Grr. “Yes, thank you. I thought I saw a rat or something crawling about.”
They chuckle in that patronizing way men tend to do at women afraid of rodents. Not that I care about rats or mice, but it’s a convenient excuse for screaming that won’t stir up trouble. The men take it upon themselves to “escort me to safety,” and leave me at the well-lit frontage of another hotel.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, my mother’s voice natters at me that this is what I get for trying to control him… getting controlled back. Though, what he did to me is less control and more an unavoidable punishment for disobeying. Even a momentary thought of abandoning Richmond and flying north to New York triggers an onset of blinding pain, so I’m pretty much stuck at least for another day, which infuriates me, but apparently, I’ve come down with another acute case of magic poisoning.
Once I release all thoughts of following him or leaving town, I find that I can move again.
That accomplished, and with little else to do but waste time, I head to the outskirts of town in search of a cow. After feeding, I return to the city center and charm my way into a room at the Spotswood Hotel. Of course, it’s already occupied, but the man doesn’t mind me there. He can’t object to me when he’s unaware I exist.
***
As soon as I wake the next afternoon, I head downstairs to the hotel bar and flop at a table, glaring at the little box.
Every time I think to get up and either abandon it to head for New York or deliver it early, the pain starts up. Figuring it would likely remain constant as long as I’m ‘disobedient,’ I bide my time and daydream about how best to exact my revenge on Delacroix for the indignity.
A strong compulsion to sit around doing nothing comes over me, and I while away the daylight hours in the hotel bar, making idle chitchat with random men who invite themselves to my table. As soon as it gets dark out, another urge drives me to my feet and sends me out the door into the lobby. My body wants to go somewhere specific, though I have no conscious idea where. Fighting it hurts too much, and since I’m sure I can overtake Delacroix as soon as I deal with this nuisance, I roll with it.
I march out of the hotel into the street, wondering where the hell I’m going, and why...
Chapter Nine
Delacroix’s damned magical influence leads me to the very outskirts of Richmond.
I approach a plantation house and head around the side to the slave quarters near a line of trees. One of the long huts stands out more than the others, which is probably the effect of the spell pulling me there. Grumbling, I make my way across the field and barge into a room, startling nine adults and a handful of small children. The adults range in age from thirties to a boy about sixteen, the other six appear younger than ten.
Though there’s little in the way of privacy here—the interior is set up more like barracks—I get the feeling these people represent several families sharing a dwelling. Some regard me with apprehension, as if they expect to be unfairly punished for a white woman being in their living quarters, but most look at me warily, as if some sixth sense keys them in on the supernatural predator in their midst.
“Is there a Cumberland here?” I ask.
One of the men, a lanky guy in his later twenties, nods. “Yes’m. That’d be me.”
“I have something for you.” I hold up the box.
Cumberland approaches me with an air of hesitant hope. He takes the box, looks at it, and blinks at me. “Where is Delacroix?”
“On his way to New York, I suspect,” I grumble.
“He was supposed to bring this to us days ago,” says a woman clutching a two-year-old.
I fidget. Oops. “He got delayed by the war. Guess he should’ve FedEx-ed it instead.”
They all stare at me like I’ve got three heads.
Cumberland opens the box, eyes the contents, and sighs with relief. “It is here.”
“You are putting your faith in nonsense,” says the oldest of the women, who appears to be about thirty.
“And what if it works, Phibe?” asks Cumberland. “Are you not willing to risk it?”
The woman scoffs and mutters something incomprehensible.
“What exactly is ‘it?’” I ask.
Cumberland removes two bottles from the box and hands one to another man. One by one, the five men drink about a shot glass worth each. Phibe starts to chuckle mockingly at them, but after a minute, her sanctimony comes to a screeching halt as the men go pale. Before my eyes, the African men grow older in seconds, continuing to lighten until five fiftyish white men stand around gawking at each other. Even the boy who looked about sixteen now seems to be pushing sixty.
One of the little boys begins to wail in a panic. His mother scoops him up and shushes him.
“It worked,” says Cumberland, his voice no different from what it had been before. “We must leave, now.”
“Whoa,” I say.
Cumberland, who’s taken on the appearance of a crotchety old prospector, complete with a mustache he could sweep a floor with, walks up to me. “I have family up north. They gave money to Mr. Delacroix to assist our escape. This magic will last only a few days. We must leave now.”
The men examine each other.
A man who’d been in his thirties before but now appears ready to drop from old age scratches his head. “I understand that. But why are we old?”
“So you don’t get conscripted into the army,” I say, taking the most obvious guess I can think of. “No one will press old men into fighting.”
A pretty teen girl stands from her bed, wide-eyed with worry. She’s still got marks on her legs from where shackles bit into her flesh. Her English hides under a thick accent. “It’s still too dangerous. You men might make it to the north, but the rest of us are going to be beaten or killed for trying to escape.”
“Calm yourself, Hany,” says another man, putting his hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Have faith.”
She shies away from his touch, scowling at the floor.
I can’t help but feel like an ogre for dragging Delacroix away from these people. That girl is only like fifteen. Yeah, the times are totally different, but to my modern sensibilities, she’s a child who shouldn’t be exposed to this. She’s still someone’s daughter. And the little ones… and even the adults. How could anyone have ever reconciled slavery with their conscience?
Before Elizabeth can torment me with her memories of conquered villagers being enslaved during her time as a mortal, I stuff her back in the mental box I keep her in.
Cumberland glances at me. “If Delacroix sent you, that means you must have some magic, too. Please, will you help us?” He gestures at the wall. “We are to go to a farmhouse a few days’ north where there are people who will hide us.”
I nod. Shit, it’s the least I can do. “Sure. I will help.”
Not like I’m in a rush or anything. I’ve only got about a hundred and fifty years or so to kill.
Chapter Ten
We head out within minutes, after only the briefest attempt to gather supplies.
Three overseers from the plantation try to question us, but I give them all a desperate compulsion to go help at the local hospital and forget entirely about this place or their duties to the landowner. The former slaves gape at me in awe, and mutter amongst themselves with renewed hope—though Phibe doesn’t fully trust me.
Our group consists of: Cumberland and his eighteen-year-old sister, Lucy; Edwin (who is twenty) and his wife, Catherine, two years his senior. The eldest, at thirty-two, is named Ben, and also looks like he’s pushing seventy. Grafton, who’s midway through his twenties and Hany’s brother, walks with a slight limp, an aftereffect of a rather vicious beating he’d suffered f
or an escape attempt two years ago. Phibe, who’s thirty, is Isaac’s mother. The sixteen-year-old now looks like a sickly white man in his later fifties, though he still has the overly polite demeanor of a young teen.
The smaller children hover close to the women, and I learn that two of them (not even ten years old yet) are no relation to anyone here, having been purchased only weeks ago, separated from their parents who could be anywhere in Virginia.
Grr.
I don’t know if Delacroix’s magic contained any compulsion to continue helping these people. Considering I’d only know about it if I resisted, I’m not about to find out. To hell with screwing up the timeline… I’m going to do whatever I can to help these people find a better life.
Near the northern edge of Richmond, a pair of police officers stop us, curious at a group of old men traveling amicably with several ‘Negro women and children.’ I send them on their way after making them forget having seen us entirely. Again, whispers go through the people with me, marveling at my influence over the minds of men.
A few of the women mutter under their breaths, but the way they’re looking at me makes it pretty obvious they regard me as some manner of dangerous witch. Of course, considering what I’m doing for them, there’s little actual hostility involved—mostly trepidation. Something tells me they’re rather highly superstitious and don’t want to do anything to get on my bad side. Voodoo, I know, is highly pervasive in the slave culture. A means to control what otherwise seemed uncontrollable. Had I been a slave, I would have been into voodoo, too. Of that, I knew without a doubt.
I feel bad enough for them already, and having them afraid of me is only making the guilt worse. Still, I don’t bother tinkering with their thoughts. The best thing I can do here is escort them to where they need to be as fast as possible and remove myself from their lives.
Soon, we leave Richmond behind and head into the wilderness, doing the best we can to avoid people and/or signs of war. After several hours, the children run out of steam, but Cumberland and Edwin keep pushing them on. Eventually, the women wear out and the men agree to stop for a brief period of rest. A small argument starts about the effects of Delacroix’s potion wearing off before they get to the safe house, but I ease their fears by assuring them I should be able to chase away any trouble short of us walking into a large battalion of Confederate soldiers armed with silver bullets. My mind control powers only work on one person at a time after all. At least, that’s what I assumed. Who knows? Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and all that. So far, I haven’t had a need to influence more than one person at a time.
